How Was 2021 for WeWALK?

Hello, I am Kürşat Ceylan, I am blind since birth and cofounder of WeWALK.
As we come to the end of the year, I wanted to reflect on 2021 .

In the shadow of the pandemic, 2021 has been a year of adjustment for many of us.. As we continue to adapt to the new norm, I continue to remain optimistic about WeWALK, our community, and the prospect of improving the independence and lives of visually impaired people in the upcoming year.I would like to share what we as a community, achieved this year achieved together.
When we looked at the countries where WeWALK was most frequently used in 2021, we noticed that 30% of our users are from the United States, followed by the UK at 23%. India and Canada were also amongst the highest user rate at 8.5%This year 133
users from various countries across the globe explored their surroundings and used WeWALK to get turn-by-turn, accessible navigation with WeWALKWe accompanied our users on their 38,000 journeys throughout the year.

The most active user we walked with used his WeWALK for three days a year.

We see that our most active user track our public transportation feature with WeWALK for three days.

We saw the effect of the pandemic measures at the beginning of the year on our users.
January 23 was the day we were at home the most with our users.
With the decrease of the pandemic effect during the Summer SeasonAugust 20 was the day when WeWALK users were out the most.

WeWALK users received twice the navigation in the first 6 months in the second half of the year.

The months with the most navigation were June, July and August.
As WeWALK, we continued to accompany our users both during the new normalization and during their holidays.

We continued to explore our surroundings together throughout the year.

With WeWALK, our users discovered what was happening around 144,723 times.
The most discovered category was food and cafes with 44%.
shopping, fitness, professional and other, bars and clubs follow respectively with 23%.

We spent 149860 minutes with our users!

We walked with our users 2497 hours throughout the year while exploring our surroundings, getting accessible navigation, learning about public transport times and following our stop.

New update monthly on iOs and android!

We continue to develop WeWALK every day for a more accessible world. Throughout the year, we continued to work on new features and improvements to our existing ones.
By publishing an average of one update per month, we brought our users together with our new features.

Multimodal turn-by-turn navigation!

At the beginning of 2021, we improved our multimodal navigation feature and offered our users to get navigation with public transportation in addition to walking mode.
We have developed many new features such as the simulation feature, where we can simulate that location without being at the desired location, our academy feature where we share content that will make the lives of our users easier, our stop tracking feature, which eliminates the question of how far I will get to the stop on public transport lines.

Startup of the Year

Our technology and mission to empower visually impaired people across the world was recognized by major organizations, including Amazon, who named WeWALK as Amazon’s Startup of the Year.

What kind of team is behind this data?

Thanks to our wonderful community, WeWALK has managed to reach hundreds of countries, accompany users on thousands of journeys and receive numerous awards which enables us to continue marching towards our primary purpose: to develop technologies that will ensure the full and equal participation of visually impaired people in social life and to deliver these technologies to the millions of visually impaired people so that they can be more independent.
It brings me absolute joy to know that our team is not alone as we continue to embark on our journey. The overwhelming support we receive from our community fuels my excitement and I am confident that 2022 will bring forth many more amazing successes to celebrate. On behalf of the entire WeWALK team, I would like to thank you for supporting us and wish you a safe and prosperous New Year.

Kürşat Ceylan
Co-Founder & CPO